Of Markers and Empty Cups
by Zero-onE001
Summary: However, that man—that Tezuka—had an unchanging pattern that got ingrained in his mind without his own volition. He didn't know—hadn't bothered to—when his eyes started following Tezuka from the entrance of the shop to his usual seat just to make sure that he was gonna sit there, making a tally on the days when the seat was occupied and he couldn't. pillarpair coffeeshop au
**Note:** Oh, man. I haven't been in the fandom for so, so long.

I started writing this fresh out of shower, pretty much sober. Then I went back to family home, got drunk, and tried to finish and post this as soon as possible because family home has stable internet connection. But I couldn't figure out what frequented means, as well as plague, and juvenile so I decided to stop this madness and just continue the day after. The Day After came sooner that I would have wanted to be, as they forced me out of bed and shooed off to go back at my place, causing me to be cranky and impatient for the rest of the morning. Now I'm kind of in a neutral mood and I find it funny how I had a spectrum of emotions in a span of a one-shot.

Disclaimer applies.

* * *

There was no mistaking it.

That man had been a patron at the coffee shop he worked part time at, long before he started working there. He always sat by the window, at the furthest corner of the shop where he was easily unnoticed by anyone—sometimes even by the shop's waiters themselves.

That man always sat for approximately two hours, reading different book each time he came. But one time he seemed to get lost in his reading, and ended up staying for two hours and a half. He thought it was funny how the man's perpetual stoic expression cracked for a split-second before he shoved his book in his bag and hurriedly dashed out of the place.

That man always came on Sundays, ordered black coffee when it was pouring, ordered caramel macchiato when the weather was pleasant, ordered mint chocolate when it's particularly sweltering. It made him wonder whether or not the man favored sweets, or just liked those flavors in particular.

Despite the varying orders, the man said the same name all the time—

 _Tezuka._

Now, it was not in his nature to remember the names of the customers in the cafe. In fact, it was quite the contrary as he almost always struggled remembering the names and faces of the people he met for the first time. It wasn't that he's forgetful, he just didn't really care.

However, that man— _that_ Tezuka—had an unchanging pattern that got ingrained in his mind without his own volition. He didn't know—hadn't _bothered_ to—when his eyes started following Tezuka from the entrance of the shop to his usual seat just to make sure that he was gonna sit there, making a tally on the days when the seat was occupied and he couldn't. He hadn't wondered why was it that when it was Tezuka's turn to order, he would mumble to his co-worker, Ibu, about some item in the basement that he couldn't reach so that he could send him off and serve Tezuka himself.

He hadn't really given it much thought, yet it still frustrated him when he realized he wrote Tezuka's name in his cup in a nicer handwriting than usual, or when he gave an extra wipe to his table whenever he cleaned it.

There was something about the plain, boring life that that man led that interested him, but he couldn't be bothered about knowing what exactly that something was. He just liked seeing that man enter the shop, sit at his usual place, purchase his usual drink, read for about two hours and leave.

That's why there was no mistaking it. The man that he liked seeing so much, that Tezuka, was the one standing on the court opposite of him, at some local street tennis court, fishing a racket from his tennis bag and proceeding to do his pre-match routine.

Who would have thought that the world was this small? Not him, for sure.

"Echizen."

He snapped out of his introspective trance and turned his head to his senior at work, Momoshiro, silently urging him to continue.

Momoshiro leaned down toward him, intending to whisper something. He inclined his head to listen, his eyes still locked on Tezuka's back. "Isn't that your favorite customer?"

That statement made him almost sputter, but he swallowed down the urge and opted to shoot his senpai a glare instead. "Don't be stupid, Momo-senpai."

Momoshiro winked at him knowingly.

* * *

Echizen, for the first time in his life, felt pretty much conflicted when the ball landed on his side of the court, 7 games to 6, followed by the shrill sound of whistle signaling the end of the game.

"Game and match, uh..." the referee trailed off, looking inquiringly at Tezuka.

"Tezuka." That man replied shortly.

"Right. Game and match, Tezuka. 7 games to 6."

He could still hear the blood pumping in his ears as he watched the exchange, and he all but dragged his feet across the court to shake hands with the other man.

 _Oh, man._

This was the first time somebody held their ground against him in tennis, and that somebody was coincidentally the same person he not-so-secretly observed at work.

Echizen wasn't quite sure what to feel.

That man held an arm out when Echizen had finally reached the net. He looked up to study his features automatically, the way he always did at the coffee shop.

However, at the cafè, Tezuka's hair wasn't blowing softly with the wind and the late afternoon sun wasn't looming above them and casting a glow behind his head that made him look important and ethereal but ephemeral... from where Echizen was looking anyway.

"Good game."

"Thanks for the match."

Also, at the cafè, his breath didn't catch in his throat.

When he shook hands with Tezuka, he thought about the things he hadn't bothered to know, hadn't wondered about and in the two seconds it took, suddenly everything fell into place.

Echizen might have liked that man more than he originally thought.

* * *

"Um?" Tezuka eyed the younger man at the counter, trying not to let confusion show in his eyes. His gaze then travelled to his cup, zooming in on the name written on it with black marker that was nearly out of ink. It read _Tezuka_ , but spelled with different characters.

He studied the man for the second time. Tezuka was sure he was the one who always took his order every time he came here, but this was the first time he had written his name wrong. And, _oh, wait. He looks familiar._

"Is something the matter, sir?" When he heard the other man's voice, he suddenly remembered that time at the street tennis court, and a flash of recognition broke through his usual poker face.

"It's nothing." Tezuka replied, and noticed a start of a smirk forming on the corner of the man's lips. He realized he was being played with.

Echizen pulled the brim of his cap (embroidered with the logo of the cafè he's working at) down his face and gave a small nod.

"Pleasure to meet you, too."

* * *

"Name, sir?"

Echizen asked, marker and empty cup at the ready, as he looked up at those chocolate orbs behind frameless glasses.

Tezuka briefly wondered why the man even bothered asking, but answered anyway. "Tezuka."

The man gave a curt nod before proceeding to write on the cup. It wasn't Tezuka's name he wrote, though, but TONY STARK in uppercase English alphabet.

Tezuka forced down a sigh.

Due to the sudden increase of units he was taking, he now frequented the coffee shop more, going to visit twice a week to relieve himself of stress. However, a new kind of stress now plagued him, in the form of a juvenile part-timer in his favorite cafè. In the past two weeks since the battle at the tennis courts, Tezuka found himself being served coffee by the same guy he defeated, who apparently took a liking into writing superhero names in his cups instead of his name. He vaguely wondered whether or not the man will have run out of superhero name to use the next time he stopped by.

"Tezuka-sama."

He snapped back to his senses and inwardly chastised himself for letting his guard down. Gazing questioningly at the man behind the counter, he realized that this was the first time he uttered his name; the suffix ringing unfamiliarly in his ears.

He also noted a ghost of the usual smirk in the man's face, as if he seemed to know what he was thinking about. Tezuka felt suddenly awkward at the thought, so he spoke, as if breaking the silence may put a stop at the mind reading the other was supposedly doing. "What is it?"

"Your matcha roll won't be available for ten minutes. Do you mind waiting, or...?" The younger man trailed off, eyes lazily shifting from the order screen to Tezuka.

"I only ordered mint chocolate," Tezuka hurriedly replied in an attempt to dispel the misunderstanding, his brows slightly furrowed in confusion. When on earth did he say he was ordering that?

But the employee only looked at him blankly, his hand snatching up a claiming number beside the monitor. He nodded to himself as though in understanding. "Right." He pushed the number in Tezuka's hands. "Thanks for the patronage."

* * *

"Sorry for making you wait, customer-sama."

Before all of these occurrences, Tezuka thought he was rather good at picking up on things as they happened. However, he was only realizing now how it became more often than not that his purchases became orders that he had to sit around and wait for—even if it was only a single drink.

He instantly knew that a certain emerald-haired employee had everything to do with it.

Said employee was now bending down to place his steaming cup of coffee on the table, followed by a small spoon wrapped in a tissue. When he reached into the pocket of his apron for packets of sugar and creamer, Tezuka waved his hand to stop him. "Oh, no. This is fine."

He thought the man already knew he took his coffee black, but dismissed it for the reason that he wouldn't possibly remember, given that he was only one out of who-knows-how-many customers.

When Tezuka heard a small snicker and saw the employee turning away immediately, it occurred to him that it wasn't the case and that he was being toyed around as usual.

"Enjoy your drink, Tezuka-san."

Tezuka had also just realized that despite him having said his name every time he stopped by, he hadn't had a chance of knowing what that employee's name was.

* * *

His initial thought as he rid the spoon of its tissue was, _Was there always something like this here?_

Tezuka smoothed the tissue that was once wrapped around his spoon and read the words written in faded black marker. _Really,_ he shook his head in amusement as he thought of the man who wrote it. _He really ought to refill the ink._

" _Did you not bring an umbrella?"_

He gazed out of the window as he read the message. It was raining particularly heavy that day, and Tezuka didn't feel like braving the rain and the cold just yet, so he had just been sitting around for three hours now, already in his third cup of coffee.

He shifted his gaze at the person manning the counter.

Maybe he should also order something to eat.

Tezuka stood up and made a beeline to the counter. He pondered over the reason he didn't know the young employee's name—which was that he always had his nameplate facing backward—Tezuka checked every time.

He also hadn't heard the other employees calling him by his name, for they liked to call him brat, chibi, and on special occasions, _asshole_.

Once, Tezuka wondered why the man was not getting reprimanded for that. On the same day, he saw the store manager—the person who was with him at the tennis court—come out and call him out on it. The young employee responded by getting mad at him when the word _fans_ got thrown in the lecture. The manager only sighed in defeat at that, and let the employee be.

Tezuka inferred that the emerald-haired man was somewhat of a baby and a spoiled brat and everyone in the shop was fine with that.

When it was his turn to order, he suddenly said, "I didn't." The words automatically tumbled out of his mouth before he knew it. "I mean, chicken pesto sandwich."

The man smirked, his eyes almost golden with intensity as they pierced him. "Mada mada dane."

* * *

The last time was, _"My cat is under your seat. Don't tell Momo-senpai."_ and the time before that was a riddle that had sun as the answer.

Tezuka found himself looking forward to those random riddles and ridiculous messages.

He unwrapped the spoon and smoothed down the tissue, a pattern that he'd gotten used to doing by now. If he was in haste he did not appear like he was. There was a small tug on the corner of his lips but he refrained from smiling.

 _Fred dies._

He glanced at the book by his left hand—Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which he had read for a record number of times now—then at the employee, who was currently serving a red-faced woman with a stony expression in his face.

His gaze travelled to the mountain of tissues on his table, which the employee placed there partly as a joke, but partly as a hint to coax Tezuka into responding to his messages.

Succumbing to the urge with a feeling of defeat welling inside him, Tezuka slowly picked a single ply and started writing to him for the first time.

Feeling as if the entire world was looking over his shoulders while he wrote, he immediately stood up and gathered his things afterward, planning to dash out and maybe wrap himself in a box and have it shipped to Pacific Ocean or something.

Tezuka wondered how the other man could write him messages and not feel awkward like how he was feeling right now.

With the tissue tucked beneath the saucer, but can still be easily seen, he headed out of the cafè, noting in his periphery the blurry figure of the employee, who grabbed the shirt of the person closest to him and force him to man the counter before stalking off.

Tezuka continued to watch the emerald-haired man even after he left the shop, looking through a glass wall. The latter shoved a red-haired employee with a bandaged cheek—who seemed to be on his way to his previous seat—away, and it made Tezuka wonder whether or not the younger man was also the reason behind that bandage.

He swiped the tissue off the table rather roughly, eyes moving past the character, expression indecipherable. And then his eyes flew up and locked with Tezuka's—sending a jolt of electricity throughout his body. It stayed like that for a moment, before the employee turned and walked away as if nothing happened.

Tezuka tried to do the same, but there was a heavy feeling fostering in the pit of his stomach.

* * *

He forgot that heavy feeling until a week later, when he stopped by the cafè after university, and it came back like a glass of cold water to the face.

The employee spared him a quick look, as if looking at him burned his eyes. Tezuka felt suddenly bitter, and not in the mood for black coffee anymore. "Caramel macchiato."

The younger man looked a bit surprised for he suddenly glanced up at him, and then averted his eyes just as quickly. Saying nothing, he reached for the marker and an empty cup.

Tezuka was watching him stare at the empty cup, contemplative, wondering why he hadn't asked his name yet, when the man suddenly wrote something down.

Before he could peek at what he wrote, the employee announced his total cost—still without looking at him—and he found himself mechanically pulling out his wallet and handing out a couple of bills.

He took the cup as the man placed it on a tray before him, face turned downward, and he headed wordlessly to his usual seat, feeling dispirited.

Only halfway did he spare a glance to his cup and saw the writing that dispelled the heavy feeling as he felt a gush of warm and fuzzy and chocolatey filling his stomach. Tezuka never knew he could describe a feeling like that.

He read the writing several times until the characters burned into his mind like an afterimage, until the characters unhinged to the meaning they were pertaining to.

 _Echizen Ryoma._

 **FIN**

* * *

It doesn't feel like an ending to me, but I wanted to end it that way. Thoughts?


End file.
